Persona: The Film Breaks And Burns In The Projecto
Persona (1966)
An actress stops speaking mid performance, a nurse talks enough for two, and Bergman lets the film itself catch fire.
Runtime
84 minutes
Director
Ingmar Bergman
Country
Sweden
Cinematography
Sven Nykvist
Two Faces And One Voice
An actress walks off stage in the middle of Electra, stops speaking entirely and is sent to a house on the Baltic coast with a nurse to look after her. For most of the film only one of the two women talks, which turns confession into a one way transfer: the nurse fills the silence with everything she has never told anyone, and the silence absorbs it and gives nothing back. Bergman makes the exchange literal in the most famous image of his career, splicing half of each woman's face into a single portrait. He also breaks the illusion on purpose, opening with a projector arc striking, a slaughtered lamb and an erection, and midway through letting the film strip jam and burn. Sven Nykvist lights the two faces so plainly that the effect is closer to interrogation than portraiture.
Watching Persona
Unease
/
Entry
Bergman wrote it in hospital while seriously ill and has said the whole film came from the image of two women sitting beside each other comparing hands.
The composite portrait was made by masking each half of the frame and printing them together. Both actresses reported not recognising themselves in the result.
"You can be still. You can be silent. Then at least you're not lying.
"Alma · Persona · 1966